University of Pittsburgh

Faculty

Nancy Pfenning

Nancy Pfenning
Senior Lecturer

2710 Cathedral of Learning
412-624-8336

http://www.pitt.edu/~nancyp/

Nancy Pfenning taught part-time in the Department of Statistics beginning in 1987, becoming a full-time lecturer in 2000 and senior lecturer in 2004.

Education:

  • PhD, Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon University, 1985

  • BS, Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, 1978

Teaching Interests:

Dr. Pfenning is interested in helping students master statistical thinking through the use of statistics in the media, data collected from students themselves, and hands-on experiments. Most importantly, her goal is to guide students toward a more global understanding of the various display, summary, and inference tools encountered in an introductory course. This approach is emphasized in her textbook Statistics: Looking at the Big Picture (Duxbury/Thomson, expected print date 2008).

Quote:

“What I like about statistics is that it gives a framework to discuss questions in any topic you can imagine—business, neuroscience, pop culture, whatever. Statistics itself is both a science, because of the mathematical rigor involved, and an art, because of the creativity needed to look at a complicated problem from the right angle.”

Courses:

  • STAT 0200, Basic Applied Statistics, Fall 2009, Fall 2008, Fall 2007
  • STAT 1000, Applied Statistical Methods, Fall 2008, Fall 2007
  • STAT 2020, Training Seminar for Statistics TAs, Fall 2008, Fall 2007

Selected Publications:

  • Statistics: Looking at the Big Picture (Duxbury/Thomson, expected print date 2008)
  • Chances Are...: Making Probability and Statistics Fun to Learn and Easy to Teach (Prufrock Press, 1998)